Product manufacturers and retailers have used electronic registration systems to help ensure compliance with return policies and to reduce improper or fraudulent product returns under warranty. For example, manufacturers and retailers of consumer products often have standard return policies, such as a retail return policy that allows a consumer to return a purchased product for any reason within a certain number of days after purchase; and a manufacturer return policy that permits the return of defective products within a particular time period after purchase, and provides for repair of defective products within a different, typically longer time period. Such return policies are intended to ensure consumer satisfaction while protecting the manufacturer and/or retailer from improper returns.
The present invention is particularly suited for use in connection with the tracking of video game consoles and consumer electronics. This is due to the relatively high cost to manufacture the consoles along with the potentially large number of peripherals associated with a console return. Additionally, the gaming business has seen a higher propensity toward consumer fraud surrounding returns, which requires the console manufacturer and retailers to be cautious in granting credit for the return of a gaming console. Further background information concerning electronic registration systems of the type outlined above may be found in the following United States patents and prior art documents cited in these patents: U.S. Pat. No. 6,085,172, Jul. 4, 2000, titled “Method and Apparatus for Efficient Handling of Product Return Transactions”; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,978,774, Nov. 2, 1999, titled “Electronic Registration System for Product Transactions”.
As described in greater detail below, the present invention takes advantage of technologies in the areas of data storage, data capture and data reporting, to enable the tracking of a unique identifier or serialization of a product for the entire life cycle of the object, i.e., from cradle to grave. (The term “serialization” refers to a Serial Number that uniquely identifies a specific instance of a product, as opposed to a type of product. In this sense, a Serial Number is distinguished from a Universal Product Code, or UPC, which identifies a type of product.) Such a process of tracking a unique serialization can be used for security, validation, recall, returns, etc. As the object travels through its life, Touch Points (sometimes called TPs) can be established to capture the unique serialization and report the same to a data storage component. Each Touch Point can have attributes (such as Serial Number and date) that are unique or similar to attributes of other Touch Points, as long as they are linked to the uniquely serialized object. Although electronic registration systems have been known, heretofore manufacturers have not had a system to track a product through its entire life cycle, i.e., its beginning, its configuration, its modification and its eventual end, and then leverage Touch Points to determine information such as when a console may be returned by retailers. (The term Touch Point refers to a point in the lifecycle of a unit where the Serial Number and/or other attributes of the unit may be collected for storage in one or more databases. Exemplary TPs are described below.)